Secretary’s Blog, August 22, 2008
by Mark Lang
On Monday Aug. 18, the Club got an email in the [email protected] mailbox from Lisa Corbett who along with her husband are members of the Wayne Co. Astronomy Club. Lisa, who works for the N.C. Dept. of Justice, has a co-worker friend Susannah Cox. It just so happened that Susannah’s father, Dr. Colin Cox, was to be in town visiting for the weekend.
The Wayne Co. group had already met earlier in the week so a talk to that group was impossible, so they asked if the RAC would like to hear Dr. Cox speak. The answer to that question was a resounding YES! Even though it was supposed to be a RACOBS night, two things helped convince us to cancel RACOBS prematurely. One was Tropical Storm Fay which was putting lots of high clouds in the southeastern US skies, and the other was limited darkness times due to an early moonrise for Friday anyway. The Wayne Co. members were encouraged to come to Raleigh to hear Dr. Cox speak. Dr. Cox works for the Space Telescope Science Institute as a senior scientific analyst. He explained his primary job was working on the images returned from the Hubble Telescope. It turns out that Hubble imaging works a lot like the CCD imaging we amateurs do – light frames, flats, darks, and bias frames then use specialized software to produce a photo that is published. All the photos Dr. Cox used can be found on the Hubble Heritage Project site at http://heritage.stsci.edu/. Using his Mac computer and a projector, Dr. Cox showed the group multitudes of stunning Hubble images taken over the years. Most notably to me were many beautiful shots of planetary nebulae. But also he showed photos of the light echo from V838 Monocerotis, a number of gravitational lens photos, and one incredible movie of Saturn’s moon rotating around the planet and rings. There was extensive question and answer session where topics like the age and expansion of the universe were discussed and the future of the Hubble itself. For a talk that came together in less than a week, the RAC had a record turnout for our normal meeting room. Seventy one people signed the roster, and I’m sure there were a few more that were present. After the break, Bob Flook came in to discuss last year’s Astronomy Days at the museum. I did not mention that the set of coincidences involved me. I coordinated the scheduling and logistics of this special meeting. Lisa and Susannah are co-workers of mine because I also work for the Dept. Of Justice. They work in another building downtown near the museum but I had no idea of their involvement in astronomy, nor had they any idea of mine. Lisa has been to the MASP in recent years. Maybe we will see Lisa and her husband there this year.
